


Everything We Leave Behind

by ItsAutumnHereFriend



Series: Shouka Sonjuku Week 2021 [1]
Category: Gintama
Genre: An Attempt At Humour, Fluff, Gintoki centric, Kind of bittersweet at the end?, Other, introspective?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-20
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-28 12:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30139854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsAutumnHereFriend/pseuds/ItsAutumnHereFriend
Summary: It's a lump of dirt with clovers stuck in it because Zura says it's good luck. It's a lump of dirt with dead plants on top of it. That's it. But... Gintoki's eyes linger on the soil indented by their fingerprints. He almost thinks he can make out which is whose.This is for Shouka Sonjuku week! Prompt: Homework.
Relationships: Katsura Kotarou & Sakata Gintoki & Takasugi Shinsuke, Sakata Gintoki & Yoshida Shouyou
Series: Shouka Sonjuku Week 2021 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2218290
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14





	Everything We Leave Behind

_ It’s a lump of dirt, _ Gintoki writes. The grass stains the bottom of his yukata, scratches at his thighs. The swaying light through breaks in the leaves loosen the grip he has on his brush, head bobbing along the gentle rhythm of the wind. 

The seedling they had planted hides under dirt still shaped with Zura's and Shouyou's fingerprints. Zura had insisted, Shouyou couldn't resist. 

Patches of clover sprawl about, trampled. A bed of clover poke through loam, on top of the seedling where Zura had made a home for them.

He stares, blank, at his lazy scrawl. Its strokes are harsh, dotted with extra ink that had slipped from his brush.  _ There is no need to use much ink, it will clump the hairs,  _ Shouyou would say. 

The wind ruffles his hair, and he watches the pages flutter close in a daze, brush still dripping. 

  
  
  


Shouyou smiles. He always does. But his smile is tighter, creaks at the edges, and says “Gintoki. I can’t seem to read this.” His nimble tugs frees a page, and like his smile, the ink and paper creak as it’s ripped open.

It’s blotched in ink, smeared like the dirt used to bury the seed in clover. There, specifically, because “it’s good luck,” as Zura puts it, as he weeds the damned place. 

“Gintoki…” His smile does not sharpen, but it does not change either. Shouyou's eyes do something odd, something Gintoki never has the words for—but he rarely cares. It makes him sweat, though, and he knows he can't run far from it without being buried in earth.

  
  
  


“No, Gintoki, the stroke is all wrong.” Zura points, dipping his finger in lettering still wet with too much ink. 

Takasugi huffs, swinging his bokuto outside the classroom. “Sensei thought you were a lost cause. That’s why he isn’t helping you anymore.” His yelling gets louder with every downward thrust, as if it could ever drown Gintoki's voice. 

“Oi, says the one who got his ass beat today. What, can’t wait for the next? Were you actually a masochist all along, Takasugi-kun?” Gintoki heaves himself up, desk rattling and wood yawning under his weight, knocking ink and brush onto wood. It spills onto the edges of the page, edges towards his writing.

“Shut up! I bested you last time, twice!” He hollers. “At least I can  _ read! _ ” 

“Who needs to read anyway? Not in this day and age, we-” 

Zura sighs, staring at the spreading ink. “Gintoki, this is why your handwriting is illegible.”

Takasugi sneers. "Can't read, can't even write."

"Come here and  _ show _ me then, shortie," Gintoki drawls, picking his nose.

Takasugi marches up the engawa, letting the bokuto fall with a clack. He sits and writes:  _ A certain perm head will stop growing this year. _

“Oi! What is this, an astrology forecast? It's not like you can grow taller anyway-”

Their yelling is soon followed by the setting sun, turning everything it touches a soft orange. Takasugi and Zura leave with the light stretching their shadows. 

Gintoki stares at the indent of Zura’s fingerprint resting in between the edges of ink and paper. He stares at Takasugi’s neat strokes next to his, sometimes dug into his own words. 

He sighs. “What does it matter, writing about a stupid plant. All we do is wait until we can eat it.”

A window of sunlight crawls and lies harshly on the open notebook, drying the ink on paper and wood. 

Gintoki plays with the edge of the journal, watches the ink shift slightly. He thinks Shouyou must have binded it himself, remembers the string left behind on his desk, a red spool. 

He leaves the journal behind to walk barefoot on the grass, back to the seedling. 

It is the same as he left it, clovers and fingerprints and the same lump of dirt. Gintoki's eyes linger on the indents pressed softly into the earth. He thinks he can make out Zura's fingerprints apart from Shouyou's. He squints—decides that, no, no he really can't—and turns to leave.

Shouyou smiles, appears almost like a ghost, out of the wood of the school and onto earth where everything grows. He smiles and beckons him forward. 

“Ah, Gintoki. Perfect timing." Shouyou opens his palm, a lone seedling amongst the lines of his hand. "I had just found another seed left over. Why don’t you accompany me? We can plant it together.”

They walk a few ways away from the other seedling. And they dig together, letting dirt under their nails, letting the bed of it stick to their skin. Shouyou handles the dirt with something akin to reverence. Gintoki notes how slow his hands are, how his fingers dig the earth into his palms. 

As they blanket the seedling, Shouyou watches Gintoki pat the soil and hums. “Perhaps you will find, just like this seedling, others who will shelter you from the cold.”

“It’s dirt.” Gintoki says blandly. 

“It is dirt,” Shouyou nods, solemn. His smile curls at his lips as it always does. “But it is you. And it is me. Look,” he gestures to the press of their fingerprints melded together in soil. “As it grows, we leave a part of ourselves behind.”

“The wind will just blow it away.”

“But it does not erase what we did.” Shouyou stands, fingers weave through Gintoki’s unruly hair. He chuckles a little as he sees that he's left pieces of earth stuck in his curls. “It does not mean we were never here, nor does it erase the memories we have of it. We have left a part of ourselves behind, Gintoki. It will take more than wind to blow it away.”

  
  
  


Gintoki grumbles as he checks the ink bound within his journal with a careless poke. He knows Shouyou will sigh when he sees the ink-stained brush he refuses to clean, but a few more days couldn't hurt. 

The last seep of the sun flows off the pages like water. He stares for a long while. Takasugi's forecast—which is bound to be untrue… Right?—Zura's fingerprint and his rushed scrawl. All bound between Shouyou's stitching.

Gintoki huffs.

He hopes the plant will grow soon. And along with it, he hopes to grow even taller than that damned Takasugi. 

Gintoki thinks, maybe, he will grow taller than Shouyou too.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a hard time with this. I just simply... Did not have the thoughts… There is no plot… Simply vibes…
> 
> It's been a while since I've finished watching the anime. I'm re-watching it right now just so I can get a better grasp of these characters, but getting to the last few arcs of the anime pains me... I don't like angst :') I just want them to be happy...   
> So, sorry if any of these characters are OOC!
> 
> Come say hi on [Tumblr!](https://itsautumnherefriend.tumblr.com/)


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